Lost and Found on Foxglove Street (The Foxglove Street #9)

Chapter 24

24

STANLEY

Some fools will try to convince you that pizza is bad for dogs. Let me reassure you—it’s not.

Unless your topping choices include chocolate or raisins, we dogs can chow down on pizza just the same as humans can. We find it just as tasty as you lot do, too. What’s not to love about crispy crusts and melted cheese and scrummy bits of mystery meat sprinkled across the top? All those things are delicious.

I’m even willing to eat my share of the veggie toppings, if they’re baked into the melted cheese and I can’t pick them out with my teeth before snaffling down my pizza slice. And if I do have to eat pesky veggies as part of my pizza treat, then at least it counts towards my five-a-day.

Actually, I’m not sure if we dogs should have five-a-day or not. That seems like an awful lot of roughage to me. Sometimes all this health advice can be hard to follow.

Anyway, in the end there was plenty of pizza going spare for a little dog like me to enjoy. Ryan ordered two pizzas once his grandmother woke up from her nap. One pizza had half pepperoni and half chicken with peppers, and the other had half margarita and half primavera, which turned out to be all kinds of veggies with mozzarella.

I had my fair share of tasty morsels while they all tucked in. It was bliss.

Grace enjoyed every minute of the evening spent eating pizza and sipping the red wine they opened and watching the movie Ryan put on once they’d finished their meal. I got cosy on the floor on the thick blanket Ryan dug out of a cupboard for me (apparently, I’ll get another new bed tomorrow, which will stay at Ryan’s house for when I’m visiting—can’t say fairer than that). Grace curled up beside Ryan on the sofa, their hands clasped together.

They make such a pretty couple. When they’re together, their auras turn a soft pink colour and merge into a sweet candy-floss tinted cloud of dreaminess. I think that means they’re meant for each other. Not many people ever find The One who makes their auras turn exactly that shade of pink. It’s a very rare and special thing.

Miriam seemed to understand only too well what was happening between the two youngsters. She was thrilled to see her grandson looking so happy. I suspected he’d had bad luck in life in the past, and had gone through some tough times that made it hard for him to let himself go when it comes to matters of the heart.

And while everyone goes through heartache at some point in their lives, the impression I got from Miriam’s stray thoughts was that Ryan still struggled with the thing that happened because the scars it left behind ran deep.

But perhaps he was able to forget about all that while he relaxed at home with Grace curled beside him. I hoped so. I liked Ryan very much.

Once the bottle of wine was finished, and the last cup of tea had been brewed for Miriam, and the movie was over, Ryan walked Grace and me home. It was another beautiful summer’s night in Hamblehurst, with twinkling stars in a sky of twilight blue. I could get used to living in a nice place like this.

All evening, I found myself mulling over what Ryan said to Grace while they were looking at the pizza menus, and he told her that she loved me and wanted to keep me forever but just hadn’t realised it yet.

Grace was shocked by what he said, but not for long.

She did want to keep me—I was sure of it. I wanted her to keep me, too. I thought she might be my new person, and I couldn’t hope for a better one.

Once the three of us strolled along Foxglove Street and reached Grace’s house, I pretended to snuffle in a shrub beside Grace’s front door while she and Ryan kissed goodnight. Even in the late evening gloaming, I could see how their auras glowed pink as they embraced each other. What a perfect end to a perfect day.

I truly hoped Ryan was right about Grace, and that she really did love me already. I already loved her. How could I not?

And I knew she was already falling in love with Ryan, and he was falling in love with her.

Just as some fools will try to tell you that dogs shouldn’t eat pizza, some fools will also try to tell you that it’s impossible for two people to fall in love so quickly.

Well, I’m here to say it is possible. Not only that, but it was happening right before my eyes.

In a world where things can so often seem much too dark, I say we should cheer for people like Grace and Ryan, who fall in love so quickly and so completely.

It seems to me that we need as many of those lovely little miracles as we can get.